Archive for February, 2012

I am not really planning on putting more reviews on this site rather I will be writing them for the site appblitz.net under the name Nate. That really is all I hope you go there as it really is a great site.

Kung Fu Car is a simple avoid the cars type game with accelerometer controls. That said the controls feel almost sluggish and unresponsive while at the same time being fast. This is due to the fact that it will take a little while for the game to recognize the players movements but once it does it zips the player’s car across lanes often faster than the player ever wanted. The game also seems to have a bit of an identity crisis too. The menus and level select screens and intro are all in landscape mode but then the actual game is in portrait mode this might seem like a small complaint but really it gets old quickly especially when those menus easily could have been in portrait mode. I mean come-on even the loading screens leading up until the game actually starts are in portrait.

There are four levels in the game. Each of the four are at a different location but the pretty much play the same. There some slight differences though such as in the level Broken Bridge the player has to hit the ramps or they will “fall” off of the bridge. The levels also all look slightly different but it really does not add much to the game. Often times the obstacles are in neither of the two lanes causing for some awkward last second decisions being made. There is also a health bar so rather then once the player hits something the game is ended they can consistently hit things and the game will continue for at least a little while longer. It adds an interesting spice to a game that feels quite stale. In the level Rocky Mountains there is also a helicopter that chases after the player’s car. Rather than is be an interesting add-in it feels like a cheap way to end the game as the grenades it throws are given no warning in advance and I could find no way to dodge them.

This game receives a 5

*Sorry for their being no pictures but the device I was using for the review would only display them in portrait mode which took away from what I was trying to show*

I have been using two books for me to start learning the language objective-c. In case you did not know that is what is used to make iPhone/iPad apps. The books are Objective-C for iPhone Developers by James A Brannan and Objective-C Programming by Aaron Hillegass. Both are great and I am going from one to the other pretty frequently. I really have barely mastered the basics but what I have learned I consider to be at the very least progress. Things such as ints and floats (things for numbers) and how NSLog is for text to appear. The book by Mr. Hillegass starts off with teaching basic C since objective-c is subset of the C language. Next up in the one book is loops and in the other is objects. Although I am thinking of starting anew in the book by Hillegass or maybe just attempt to finish the one by Brannan first. I know this might not be the most entertaining read but it is just a quick update on things I actually feel as though I have mastered.

On the other hand I thought up another game idea but do not really feel as though it work on iPhone without an actual controller for buttons. I have a few more on the back burner for games too but I really shouldn’t get ahead of myself as I have only just scratched the surface of learning, if you could even call it that.

The app How to Draw is a great app for peopling that want to learn how to draw but only if the user has a great interest in Spongebob. The person teaching throughout the app really does a passion for drawing and loves knowing he is helping other people learn. The guy is Ken O’Brian and as he says he is a major Spongebob fan which is fantastic since almost all the chapters have to do with learning either characters or environments from the show. He also tells the user that he has worked on actual Spongebob games (which were not really good at all) but that is not his fault since he only did the art for them. Which actually looked pretty good. Not to mention the interface looks fantastic.

I love the look of this.

I came into this app pretty much having absolutely no ability to draw and by the end of the lessons I actually felt as though I accomplished something. The app can either be used with standard pencil and paper, which I used, or a tablet device with a stylus. Which basically means as long as the user pays the 2 dollars for the app and have pieces of paper in their home there are no restrictions to their learning. The app lets the user check of videos as the go once they finish a video which leads to a nice ability to see what pace the user is going through the videos. That said the videos cannot only be watched once to completely understand what is going on as with anything being learned practice truly does make perfect. The videos are on youtube but the user has the ability to download all of them which is great as it allows people that do not have wifi at the moment or want to use there 3g which means the user can learn at any time.

There are 7 individual chapters each with a multitude of videos within. The first chapter is just a quick introduction to the app and then 2 through 5 are all about learning to draw the different facets of the show Spongebob and chapter 7 is all about learning to draw things from the movie Lion King. The chapters do build on each other and it really does help the user learn how to draw things from Spongebob. By the end of this I could actually look at my work and not feel like throwing it immediately in the trash and more felt as though I could improve but at the same time see how far I came from when I first started the app. That said the app really will only prod the user forward and wanting to learn if they do not completely hate Spongebob.

NoteLock does what exactly what is says it will do…for the most part that is. The app has a simple design with an easy to use login screen. But after things get a little strange.

No way I'm telling you people my password!

I mean the user only has the ability to have one note at a time I mean yes it is possible to hit enter to differentiate from notes but the feature to have more than one would be nice. Figuring out how to edit the note is pretty easy as all it takes is a quick tap of the edit button and then yet another quick tap in the note itself to finally get started editing. The ability to change the user’s password also must be accessed from a tap of the edit button.

The only other problem I personally had with NoteLock was that it did not import my old notes. I am sure it would have taken some extra time to figure it out but to me it would have been worth it to have. Wether it just put a password on the actual Apple Note app or imported the notes themselves, either way would have been sufficient. Other than my few complaints the app really does not do anything wrong and manages to do everything with a simple look. If someone would be looking for an app that puts a password on notes than this is certainly a viable option.

First thing to note is that RAVN Events is free so everyone should check it out but I will review it just to make sure it is worth people’s time to download and after all I was asked by the developer to review it. The basic premise of the app is to find local events happening near the user. Granted this is only really useful if the user lives in a big area where there are things of this nature are regularly occurring. The things I am talking about are food events to parades to movie showings.

Where I live these events are not really all that frequent but it is easy enough to change the location. All the user has to do is simply change the location by typing in it in a search bar which will then find events in the area that the user has chosen. I personally changed it to New York City and let me tell everyone reading this there is a heck of a lot going on there. Its really remarkable to see how much actually goes on cities that some people might not even know about. Not to mention that under each event the user can see people that also want to participate in that certain event. That really is all the app does but then what more could a person ask for.

I loved finding random events that seemed awesome.

The interface is certainly beautiful and sophisticated and works fantastically. As long as the user lives in a large city this app should always be in their rotation. Even if a person lives nowhere near a large enough city for this to be of use they should still check it out since its FREE!

There are some minor changes to the sight beginning almost immediately. First of all reviews will be every other day instead of every day so they can be of higher quality, there are still 9 reviews in the works and hopefully more to come. Unfortunately this means that developers will not get their app reviewed as quickly but hey I am just one guy and do not only have time to run this site. I will also begin posting things that are helping me learn to program with things such as what things I am using to learn, what I have learned and future ideas. I also plan on posting more opinion pieces on things like games I have been playing on consoles and tv shows that I have been watching recently. Thats about it let me know what you think of this in the comments below.